Mavrck Releases Influencer Fraud Detection Tools

Boston-based influencer marketing platform Mavrck has launched automated tools to help combat influencer fraud.

Mavrck uses a proprietary 'influencer activation engine' to identify and activate brands' most influential customers across social media networks at scale, focusing on existing customers it calls 'micro-influencers'. It also offers access to a tool called Fan Grader, to track the engagement of a brand's Facebook page, and identify its top 100 most engaged fans. In April, Mavrck launched Macro-Influencer Workflow Automation capabilities, which enable customers to measure influencer content across networks, and track and attribute actions driven as a result of that content.

In a study of a sample of 3,992 Instagram influencers with at least 5,000 followers, Mavrck found that 394 (9.8%) engaged in fraudulent behavior by buying followers or engagements. To address this issue, Mavrck has developed a machine learning algorithm that assesses a statistically significant sample of an influencer's followers, as well as accounts that like or comment on that influencer's posts, to determine if an Instagram account is from a real person or if the account is operated by a bot for the purposes of creating artificial followers, likes, and/or comments. Based on the firm's analysis, an account can be flagged as being high, medium, or low risk of having purchased followers or engagements.

With beta testing now complete, Mavrck is rolling out the capability to select customers as a premium feature, and will make it available to more customers in the coming months. CEO and co-founder Lyle Stevens (pictured) comments: 'Unfortunately, the methods by which some bad actors try to game the system with fraudulent followers and engagements have grown in sophistication to the point where visual inspection is no longer good enough to filter out fraud, especially if you're activating thousands per month like some of our Fortune 100 customers. To help address this growing problem, Mavrck has developed an automated way to flag an individual as potentially engaging in fraudulent activity so that a marketer can filter out bad actors'.

Web site: www.mavrck.co .